We talk about trauma mostly in terms of damage. What it does. What it breaks. What it leaves behind. What we talk about far less is what trauma interrupts . Not just safety. Not just childhood. But intelligence. Emotional fluency. The person someone might have been if their nervous system had ever learned it was safe. Shawn is a fictional character. But the question he raises is very real: Who might someone have been if trauma hadn’t redirected every ounce of their intelligen

People like numbers. Scores. Labels. Clean edges. I didn’t grow up clean. I learned early how to read a room. Not because I was special. Because guessing wrong was dangerous. Tone. Posture. When someone stopped talking too fast. When someone got quiet. That kind of awareness keeps you alive. Doesn’t leave much room for anything else. I didn’t know what EQ was back then. IQ, sure. That one got talked about. I just knew my head never stopped working and my emotions were either

Thanksgiving Never understood this holiday. Still don’t. People make it sound soft. Warm. Like the world stops hurting because someone puts a turkey on the table. We had one. A table. Just too small for all the other things in that trailer. There weren’t days off. Pain didn’t take breaks. Neither did they. Teachers used to make us write lists of things we were thankful for. Kids making jokes, rolling their eyes like they had real problems. And me, sitting there trying to pick

TOUCH ( Unveiled Publishing) Wins Silver and Community Voice Award in Human & Civil Rights for The 5th Annual Anthem Awards This past month has been surreal in the best way. TOUCH received both a Silver Award and the Community Voice Award in the Human & Civil Rights category at the 5th Annual Anthem Awards . It’s an honor I didn’t anticipate, especially for a book that tackles a subject most people struggle to even acknowledge. Almost all of the feedback I receive about TOUCH

If you picture trafficking, who do you see? A girl. Probably. Maybe a girl with a missing-person poster or a tragic headline. That’s the...

Healing sounds like it should be steady. Upward. Predictable. But for most survivors, it’s anything but. Healing is showing up one day...

When people talk about survival, they picture fight. Maybe flight. They don’t picture freezing. They don’t picture fawning—keeping the...

Three words every survivor waits for: I believe you. When no one says them, silence wins. And silence is heavy — it keeps kids stuck,...

If this feels close to home: Safe First Steps Sometimes just thinking about telling someone feels impossible. Maybe you’ve tried before...

Why do some survivors defend the very people who harmed them? Why do they stay, return, or even grieve the loss of the relationship? If...

Don’t get it? Yeah. Me either. The psych says I should write it down. Says it’s safer on paper than stuck in my head. Says my brain wired...

What we don’t talk about—and why we need to. Having written a fiction book about a very real issue, I often find myself in the middle...

Understanding the Impact of Child Exploitation Among Youth Males In Part 1, I talked about the many reasons boys often stay silent. But...

If you’ve worked in social services, education, or healthcare, you’ve likely come across the ACE test—short for Adverse Childhood...

What If the Score Hits Too Hard? So maybe you’ve taken the ACE test. Maybe your score was higher than you expected. Or maybe it was...

They handed me a form once. Ten questions. Check the boxes. Add up your score. It was supposed to explain everything. Why my body won’t...

Once upon a time, there was a nice man named Bob... He lived in a land just like you and I. Bob’s story began not with grand plans for...

Three years ago, TOUCH  was just a book in readers’ hands. Today, it’s in the hands of Hollywood decision-makers. Yes, they’re reading...

I didn’t set out to write Megan’s story. I set out to write Shawn’s. But I didn’t think the world was ready to hear his version of...

Touch  was supposed to be Megan’s story. I wasn’t supposed to be the one talking. Probably smart. I don’t clean up well on paper. Megan...